Provoking Harmony

By Bob McCahill

LETTER FROM BANGLADESH

Maryknoll Missioner Fr Bob McCahill shares his life and what inter-religious dialogue can mean in practice.

Bicycling in an alley of Feni town I encountered a large, black-bearded man, piously dressed and wearing a severe expression on his face. After staring at me a while his face suddenly softened. He smiled broadly, gestured expansively, and declared “Thank you!”

I did not know the man or why he felt friendly towards me. Maybe he had heard that I have helped numerous Muslim children who are disabled. His frank appreciation for someone outside his own religious, ethnic, and cultural communities is basic to building peace. I think of him as a provocateur of harmony between Muslims and Christians. 

One with the poor

Several seminarians have come to dwell in Feni for a fortnight each, assigned by their superiors to live with me among Muslims, up close.

One of the young men, Dominic, is a competent cyclist but unaccustomed to riding long distances. For his sake I almost regretted one day that we rode twenty miles to perform tasks that could have been done in ten. I consoled him with the fact that even when we merely ride, and are apparently only exercising, we actually never waste time while going around.

“So, then,” he reasoned, “if we would ride motorbikes we could go further and see even more people.” True, I argued, but bicycles are a simpler technology, more suited to showing our oneness with the poor. To the Muslims our exertions give witness to Allah’s mercy, a concept about which they have heard much from their Islamic faith. 

Keen on prayer

A fire was burning in the earthen stove where rice was being cooked for the fifty rickshaw drivers with whom I share this compound. Thus, I carried waste papers from my room to the cooking shed to feed to the flames. Normally this act of neighborliness is welcomed. Not, however, this time. Noor Islam, a rickshaw driver, spied among the papers I was tossing out a small empty carton having familiar writing on it. “Arabic”, he announced; “The Quran”. (In fact, the script was Urdu, which looks similar.) I explained: “The writing you see is merely about the spices that once filled this carton.” Nevertheless, I quietly withdrew the carton. My closest Muslim neighbors are mostly illiterate. They have been taught that Arabic is a holy script, not fit to be consigned to fire, especially by a Christian.

During Ramzan, the month of fasting and special attention to prayer, numerous men of this neighborhood are glad for my presence because they like to have someone on whom to exercise their piety. They enjoy instructing me not to wash my clothes or bathe my body at the pond beside the mosque because the noise disrupts their prayer. Several times I arrived at the pond half an hour before prayers - plenty of time to wash clothing and take a bath before their prayers. What happened? Persons old and young warned me not to transgress the demands of Islamic devotion. Zeal for prayer consumes them. 

Absorbing abuse

One evening as I walked slowly along the unlighted road in front of our compound a rickshaw pulled alongside. The driver, from another compound and unknown to me, sternly informed me of the displeasure he feels whenever he sees me: “Your countrymen are killing Muslims!” Bangladeshi Muslims, as probably Muslims of many nations, have a consciousness that they belong to a world-wide community. When one part of the community is grievously hurt, all suffer - like a body. I was not disappointed when the complainer disappeared into the darkness after getting off his chest that which readily inflames his emotions.

At noonday soon after the invasion of Iraq I was cursed and mocked. I was returning to my own neighborhood after biking afar all morning. Someone shouted “Haramjada!” , a term of abuse, like “scoundrel”, or worse. Shortly afterwards while I bathed in the pond another sneered loudly “Bob Bush!” At neither of the detractors did I look. They knew I had heard them and I was not ignoring them but, rather, was absorbing their disgust. Whenever I can I try to remain silent under abuse. That way the initiative remains with the abusers; any escalation of incivility will have to be theirs. Moreover, I trust in their decency not to overdo the abuse. 

Striving together

Imam Hossain, a disabled shoe repairman, stood up hastily when he saw me drawing near. “Brother! I have two patients for you. One child has a cleft lip. The other child has a bloated leg. Can you help them?” We arranged for the two children from distant villages to meet me on a Thursday. “Brother”, Imam continued, “Let me give you tea. You helped my son, now I want to treat you.”

Copyright©2003 World Mission Magazine